State of the Apocalypse: Beginning the Last Week of the First Month

Don’t mind me, I’m nuts.

It’s been a rough start. Most people will remember the last week of December 2015 and the first weeks of 2016 as the Great Die-Off, when people in music fell away from us in bunches, from leading men like Scott Weiland, Lemmy Kilmister, David Bowie, and Glenn Frey, to the drummer for Mott the Hoople, and many others. It does bear pointing out that this is 2016, and these legends and their sidemen of 25, 30, 40, and 50 years ago have to leave us sometime. 

If you want to really depress yourself, imagine who might be the last great name left. This doesn’t have to be limited to music, either; think of your favorite actors from those classic movies they’re remaking every year. One day the last of the Greats will be gone, and the dead pool will be betting on whether Taylor Swift or Nikki Minaj will croak first. 

I take some comfort knowing I may not live to see such gray and desolate times.

The lousy weather back east once again makes me question moving to South Carolina. This winter hasn’t been bad at all here in Colorado Springs. No, get me out of this declining neighborhood and into something stable and thriving (better yet, in the country), and I’ll be good.

For all the distractions in the media, all those heavily promoted non-controversies we will not dignify with mention, it hasn’t been too bad on the home front. If I’ve let the blog go without updates for days at a time, it’s because I’ve been on fire with writing The Wrong Kind of Dead. These last couple of nights have been exhilarating.

Gerry Anderson’s Captain Scarlet was a childhood
favorite of mine.

The plot is advancing, and my characters are taking on layers and dimensions I never expected to see. I don’t feel like I’m running a puppet show (if I am, it’s a badass ultraviolent Gerry Anderson Supermarionation) so much as I’m directing actors in a film. Derek, Agnes, Elyssa, Brother Christopher, Ethan...before, they weren’t much more than names with attached characteristics and utilities on my monitor. Now I see their faces. I hear their voices.

Of course, I could simply be losing my mind. Since I dropped my last ten pounds, it feels like the thin fog that was always present in my head, holding me back, has cleared away. Intermittent fasting, as I’ve been doing, will do trippy things to the head.

As it is, I’m productive, and sleeping better than I ever remember. I’ll stay this course.

I mentioned on Facebook that this was what it felt like trying to write throughout October and November. Actually, this pretty much described most of 2015. It wasn’t until around Christmas that the wood in the metaphorical door began to give.

I’ve got over 1,100 Followers on Twitter now, and have been flattered to get picked up by people with blue checkmarks next to their names, for what all that’s worth. I’ve got cargo container shiploads of authors on my Authors list, although it’s maybe three or four of them who are assiduous about re-Tweeting promotional stuff. I can’t judge; I need to work on that myself. As I’ve said early and often, you have to give Twitter love to get Twitter love.

As Twitter traffic drives the blog, it would appear I’m getting enough such love to be on track for my best month ever in terms of pageviews. Also, people have given themselves permission to buy my books. I’m by no means rich and famous yet, but I’m gaining momentum. I feel like a little kid in a red wagon going down a hill hollering, Faster, faster!

I’ve got to meet my improving luck halfway. There is always so much more to do. Sure, it’s been a grim month. But there was much good to harvest, too. The best, as always, is yet to come.